Charles Koch's dad, Fred, started the family business in 1940 and improved a method of refining heavy oil into gasoline. Charles took over as chairman and CEO of the oil and gas business after his father's death in 1967 and expanded the firm into Koch Industries, a $100 billion (sales) conglomerate that includes chemicals manufacturing, pipelines and commodities trading. A subsidiary, Georgia Pacific (maker of Brawny paper towels and Dixie cups), launched its first line of carpet cleaners under the Stainmaster brand in August 2016; refining and chemicals unit Flint Hills Resources started up a new biodiesel plant a month later. Koch Industries has also implemented the "Ban the Box" policy: removing the question that asks for a job candidate's criminal history on the initial application. Longtime Republican megadonor Charles Koch publicly compared the race between Trump and Clinton as being forced to choose between "cancer" and a "heart attack." More »

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Last week’s Republican National Convention offered a window into the workings of Donald Trump’s campaign, drawing members of the Trump family together with key supporters like politicos Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie as well as a handful of billionaires. With the announcement of newly tapped VP Mike Pence, voters might be wondering what an read »

Though not many in number, some stalwart Republican donors have finally started lining up behind Donald Trump, who just Tuesday evening was officially nominated by delegates at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to be the GOP’s standard-bearer in the 2016 presidential election.

The outrage du jour over at Salon concerning the Koch Brothers is that they are running an economic education program which tells young people something which is true. Why it’s wrong to educate young people or why we shouldn’t tell them things which are true isn’t quite explained but there’s definitely lots of outrage about it. The read »

Great fortunes are notoriously easy to lose. Not so for the nation’s 25 richest clans, who’ve bucked the odds and held onto their wealth over generations, in some cases since the late 1800s. Collectively they are worth $722 billion this year, $11 billion less than the top 25 were a year ago.

This year 223 companies made it onto Forbes’ annual ranking of America’s largest private companies. As a group these companies have combined revenues of $1.62 trillion and employ over 4.5 million people. Companies come from 35 states and represent industries from every part of the economy.

and take the number one and two spots, respectively. Minneapolis-based Cargill has only missed the number one ranking twice in the 32 years Forbes has published this list. Koch Industries saw their revenues drop 13% to $100 billion but the company easily ranks second on the list. read »